OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Structural Interventions and the Dynamics of Inequality
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

Recent conversations in the algorithmic fairness literature have raised several concerns with standard conceptions of fairness. First, constraining predictive algorithms to satisfy fairness benchmarks may lead to non-optimal outcomes for disadvantaged groups. Second, technical interventions are often ineffective by themselves, especially when divorced from an understanding of structural processes that generate social inequality. Inspired by both these critiques, we construct a common decision-making model, using mortgage loans as a running example. We show that under some conditions, any choice of decision threshold will inevitably perpetuate existing disparities in financial stability unless one deviates from the Pareto optimal policy. Then, we model the effects of three different types of interventions. We show how different interventions are recommended depending upon the difficulty of enacting structural change upon external parameters and depending upon the policymaker's preferences for equity or efficiency. Counterintuitively, we demonstrate that preferences for efficiency over equity may lead to recommendations for interventions that target the under-resourced group. Finally, we simulate the effects of interventions on a dataset that combines HMDA and Fannie Mae loan data. This research highlights the ways that structural inequality can be perpetuated by seemingly unbiased decision mechanisms, and it shows that in many situations, technical solutions must be paired with external, context-aware interventions to enact social change.
MP-PolarMask: A Faster and Finer Instance Segmentation for Concave Images
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

While there are a lot of models for instance segmentation, PolarMask stands out as a unique one that represents an object by a Polar coordinate system. With an anchor-box-free design and a single-stage framework that conducts detection and segmentation at one time, PolarMask is proved to be able to balance efficiency and accuracy. Hence, it can be easily connected with other downstream real-time applications. In this work, we observe that there are two deficiencies associated with PolarMask: (i) inability of representing concave objects and (ii) inefficiency in using ray regression. We propose MP-PolarMask (Multi-Point PolarMask) by taking advantage of multiple Polar systems. The main idea is to extend from one main Polar system to four auxiliary Polar systems, thus capable of representing more complicated convex-and-concave-mixed shapes. We validate MP-PolarMask on both general objects and food objects of the COCO dataset, and the results demonstrate significant improvement of 13.69% in AP_L and 7.23% in AP over PolarMask with 36 rays.
From Feature Visualization to Visual Circuits: Effect of Adversarial Model Manipulation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Understanding the inner working functionality of large-scale deep neural networks is challenging yet crucial in several high-stakes applications. Mechanistic inter- pretability is an emergent field that tackles this challenge, often by identifying human-understandable subgraphs in deep neural networks known as circuits. In vision-pretrained models, these subgraphs are usually interpreted by visualizing their node features through a popular technique called feature visualization. Recent works have analyzed the stability of different feature visualization types under the adversarial model manipulation framework. This paper starts by addressing limitations in existing works by proposing a novel attack called ProxPulse that simultaneously manipulates the two types of feature visualizations. Surprisingly, when analyzing these attacks under the umbrella of visual circuits, we find that visual circuits show some robustness to ProxPulse. We, therefore, introduce a new attack based on ProxPulse that unveils the manipulability of visual circuits, shedding light on their lack of robustness. The effectiveness of these attacks is validated using pre-trained AlexNet and ResNet-50 models on ImageNet.
Multi-Agent Transfer Learning via Temporal Contrastive Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

This paper introduces a novel transfer learning framework for deep multi-agent reinforcement learning. The approach automatically combines goal-conditioned policies with temporal contrastive learning to discover meaningful sub-goals. The approach involves pre-training a goal-conditioned agent, finetuning it on the target domain, and using contrastive learning to construct a planning graph that guides the agent via sub-goals. Experiments on multi-agent coordination Overcooked tasks demonstrate improved sample efficiency, the ability to solve sparse-reward and long-horizon problems, and enhanced interpretability compared to baselines. The results highlight the effectiveness of integrating goal-conditioned policies with unsupervised temporal abstraction learning for complex multi-agent transfer learning. Compared to state-of-the-art baselines, our method achieves the same or better performances while requiring only 21.7% of the training samples.
Learning Analysis of Kernel Ridgeless Regression with Asymmetric Kernel Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Ridgeless regression has garnered attention among researchers, particularly in light of the ``Benign Overfitting'' phenomenon, where models interpolating noisy samples demonstrate robust generalization. However, kernel ridgeless regression does not always perform well due to the lack of flexibility. This paper enhances kernel ridgeless regression with Locally-Adaptive-Bandwidths (LAB) RBF kernels, incorporating kernel learning techniques to improve performance in both experiments and theory. For the first time, we demonstrate that functions learned from LAB RBF kernels belong to an integral space of Reproducible Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHSs). Despite the absence of explicit regularization in the proposed model, its optimization is equivalent to solving an $\ell_0$-regularized problem in the integral space of RKHSs, elucidating the origin of its generalization ability. Taking an approximation analysis viewpoint, we introduce an $l_q$-norm analysis technique (with $0<q<1$) to derive the learning rate for the proposed model under mild conditions. This result deepens our theoretical understanding, explaining that our algorithm's robust approximation ability arises from the large capacity of the integral space of RKHSs, while its generalization ability is ensured by sparsity, controlled by the number of support vectors. Experimental results on both synthetic and real datasets validate our theoretical conclusions.
Corps: A Core Calculus of Hierarchical Choreographic Programming
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2024
Year: 2024

Functional choreographic programming suggests a new propositions-as-types paradigm might be possible. In this new paradigm, communication is not modeled linearly; instead, ownership of a piece of data is modeled as a modality, and communication changes that modality. However, we must find an appropriate modal logic for the other side of the propositions-as-types correspondence. This paper argues for doxastic logics, or logics of belief. In particular, authorization logics -- doxastic logics with explicit communication -- appear to represent hierarchical choreographic programming. This paper introduces hierarchical choreographic programming and presents Corps, a language for hierarchical choreographic programming with a propositions-as-types interpretation in authorization logic.
DA-HFNet: Progressive Fine-Grained Forgery Image Detection and Localization Based on Dual Attention
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The increasing difficulty in accurately detecting forged images generated by AIGC(Artificial Intelligence Generative Content) poses many risks, necessitating the development of effective methods to identify and further locate forged areas. In this paper, to facilitate research efforts, we construct a DA-HFNet forged image dataset guided by text or image-assisted GAN and Diffusion model. Our goal is to utilize a hierarchical progressive network to capture forged artifacts at different scales for detection and localization. Specifically, it relies on a dual-attention mechanism to adaptively fuse multi-modal image features in depth, followed by a multi-branch interaction network to thoroughly interact image features at different scales and improve detector performance by leveraging dependencies between layers. Additionally, we extract more sensitive noise fingerprints to obtain more prominent forged artifact features in the forged areas. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our approach, demonstrating significant performance improvements compared to state-of-the-art methods for forged image detection and localization.The code and dataset will be released in the future.
Single Trajectory Conformal Prediction
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We study the performance of risk-controlling prediction sets (RCPS), an empirical risk minimization-based formulation of conformal prediction, with a single trajectory of temporally correlated data from an unknown stochastic dynamical system. First, we use the blocking technique to show that RCPS attains performance guarantees similar to those enjoyed in the iid setting whenever data is generated by asymptotically stationary and contractive dynamics. Next, we use the decoupling technique to characterize the graceful degradation in RCPS guarantees when the data generating process deviates from stationarity and contractivity. We conclude by discussing how these tools could be used toward a unified analysis of online and offline conformal prediction algorithms, which are currently treated with very different tools.
nn2poly: An R Package for Converting Neural Networks into Interpretable Polynomials
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The nn2poly package provides the implementation in R of the NN2Poly method to explain and interpret feed-forward neural networks by means of polynomial representations that predict in an equivalent manner as the original network.Through the obtained polynomial coefficients, the effect and importance of each variable and their interactions on the output can be represented. This capabiltiy of capturing interactions is a key aspect usually missing from most Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods, specially if they rely on expensive computations that can be amplified when used on large neural networks. The package provides integration with the main deep learning framework packages in R (tensorflow and torch), allowing an user-friendly application of the NN2Poly algorithm. Furthermore, nn2poly provides implementation of the required weight constraints to be used during the network training in those same frameworks. Other neural networks packages can also be used by including their weights in list format. Polynomials obtained with nn2poly can also be used to predict with new data or be visualized through its own plot method. Simulations are provided exemplifying the usage of the package alongside with a comparison with other approaches available in R to interpret neural networks.
MaGS: Reconstructing and Simulating Dynamic 3D Objects with Mesh-adsorbed Gaussian Splatting
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

3D reconstruction and simulation, although interrelated, have distinct objectives: reconstruction requires a flexible 3D representation that can adapt to diverse scenes, while simulation needs a structured representation to model motion principles effectively. This paper introduces the Mesh-adsorbed Gaussian Splatting (MaGS) method to address this challenge. MaGS constrains 3D Gaussians to roam near the mesh, creating a mutually adsorbed mesh-Gaussian 3D representation. Such representation harnesses both the rendering flexibility of 3D Gaussians and the structured property of meshes. To achieve this, we introduce RMD-Net, a network that learns motion priors from video data to refine mesh deformations, alongside RGD-Net, which models the relative displacement between the mesh and Gaussians to enhance rendering fidelity under mesh constraints. To generalize to novel, user-defined deformations beyond input video without reliance on temporal data, we propose MPE-Net, which leverages inherent mesh information to bootstrap RMD-Net and RGD-Net. Due to the universality of meshes, MaGS is compatible with various deformation priors such as ARAP, SMPL, and soft physics simulation. Extensive experiments on the D-NeRF, DG-Mesh, and PeopleSnapshot datasets demonstrate that MaGS achieves state-of-the-art performance in both reconstruction and simulation.
Backpropagation-Free Multi-modal On-Device Model Adaptation via Cloud-Device Collaboration
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

In our increasingly interconnected world, where intelligent devices continually amass copious personalized multi-modal data, a pressing need arises to deliver high-quality, personalized device-aware services. However, this endeavor presents a multifaceted challenge to prevailing artificial intelligence (AI) systems primarily rooted in the cloud. As these systems grapple with shifting data distributions between the cloud and devices, the traditional approach of fine-tuning-based adaptation (FTA) exists the following issues: the costly and time-consuming data annotation required by FTA and the looming risk of model overfitting. To surmount these challenges, we introduce a Universal On-Device Multi-modal Model Adaptation Framework, revolutionizing on-device model adaptation by striking a balance between efficiency and effectiveness. The framework features the Fast Domain Adaptor (FDA) hosted in the cloud, providing tailored parameters for the Lightweight Multi-modal Model on devices. To enhance adaptability across multi-modal tasks, the AnchorFrame Distribution Reasoner (ADR) minimizes communication costs. Our contributions, encapsulated in the Cloud-Device Collaboration Multi-modal Parameter Generation (CDC-MMPG) framework, represent a pioneering solution for on-Device Multi-modal Model Adaptation (DMMA). Extensive experiments validate the efficiency and effectiveness of our method, particularly in video question answering and retrieval tasks, driving forward the integration of intelligent devices into our daily lives.
CoLa-DCE -- Concept-guided Latent Diffusion Counterfactual Explanations
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Recent advancements in generative AI have introduced novel prospects and practical implementations. Especially diffusion models show their strength in generating diverse and, at the same time, realistic features, positioning them well for generating counterfactual explanations for computer vision models. Answering "what if" questions of what needs to change to make an image classifier change its prediction, counterfactual explanations align well with human understanding and consequently help in making model behavior more comprehensible. Current methods succeed in generating authentic counterfactuals, but lack transparency as feature changes are not directly perceivable. To address this limitation, we introduce Concept-guided Latent Diffusion Counterfactual Explanations (CoLa-DCE). CoLa-DCE generates concept-guided counterfactuals for any classifier with a high degree of control regarding concept selection and spatial conditioning. The counterfactuals comprise an increased granularity through minimal feature changes. The reference feature visualization ensures better comprehensibility, while the feature localization provides increased transparency of "where" changed "what". We demonstrate the advantages of our approach in minimality and comprehensibility across multiple image classification models and datasets and provide insights into how our CoLa-DCE explanations help comprehend model errors like misclassification cases.
TinySV: Speaker Verification in TinyML with On-device Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2024
Year: 2024

TinyML is a novel area of machine learning that gained huge momentum in the last few years thanks to the ability to execute machine learning algorithms on tiny devices (such as Internet-of-Things or embedded systems). Interestingly, research in this area focused on the efficient execution of the inference phase of TinyML models on tiny devices, while very few solutions for on-device learning of TinyML models are available in the literature due to the relevant overhead introduced by the learning algorithms. The aim of this paper is to introduce a new type of adaptive TinyML solution that can be used in tasks, such as the presented \textit{Tiny Speaker Verification} (TinySV), that require to be tackled with an on-device learning algorithm. Achieving this goal required (i) reducing the memory and computational demand of TinyML learning algorithms, and (ii) designing a TinyML learning algorithm operating with few and possibly unlabelled training data. The proposed TinySV solution relies on a two-layer hierarchical TinyML solution comprising Keyword Spotting and Adaptive Speaker Verification module. We evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed TinySV solution on a dataset collected expressly for the task and tested the proposed solution on a real-world IoT device (Infineon PSoC 62S2 Wi-Fi BT Pioneer Kit).
Towards Harnessing Large Language Models for Comprehension of Conversational Grounding
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Conversational grounding is a collaborative mechanism for establishing mutual knowledge among participants engaged in a dialogue. This experimental study analyzes information-seeking conversations to investigate the capabilities of large language models in classifying dialogue turns related to explicit or implicit grounding and predicting grounded knowledge elements. Our experimental results reveal challenges encountered by large language models in the two tasks and discuss ongoing research efforts to enhance large language model-based conversational grounding comprehension through pipeline architectures and knowledge bases. These initiatives aim to develop more effective dialogue systems that are better equipped to handle the intricacies of grounded knowledge in conversations.
Sparser, Better, Deeper, Stronger: Improving Sparse Training with Exact Orthogonal Initialization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Static sparse training aims to train sparse models from scratch, achieving remarkable results in recent years. A key design choice is given by the sparse initialization, which determines the trainable sub-network through a binary mask. Existing methods mainly select such mask based on a predefined dense initialization. Such an approach may not efficiently leverage the mask's potential impact on the optimization. An alternative direction, inspired by research into dynamical isometry, is to introduce orthogonality in the sparse subnetwork, which helps in stabilizing the gradient signal. In this work, we propose Exact Orthogonal Initialization (EOI), a novel sparse orthogonal initialization scheme based on composing random Givens rotations. Contrary to other existing approaches, our method provides exact (not approximated) orthogonality and enables the creation of layers with arbitrary densities. We demonstrate the superior effectiveness and efficiency of EOI through experiments, consistently outperforming common sparse initialization techniques. Our method enables training highly sparse 1000-layer MLP and CNN networks without residual connections or normalization techniques, emphasizing the crucial role of weight initialization in static sparse training alongside sparse mask selection. The code is available at https://github.com/woocash2/sparser-better-deeper-stronger
Reproducibility Study on Adversarial Attacks Against Robust Transformer Trackers
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

New transformer networks have been integrated into object tracking pipelines and have demonstrated strong performance on the latest benchmarks. This paper focuses on understanding how transformer trackers behave under adversarial attacks and how different attacks perform on tracking datasets as their parameters change. We conducted a series of experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of existing adversarial attacks on object trackers with transformer and non-transformer backbones. We experimented on 7 different trackers, including 3 that are transformer-based, and 4 which leverage other architectures. These trackers are tested against 4 recent attack methods to assess their performance and robustness on VOT2022ST, UAV123 and GOT10k datasets. Our empirical study focuses on evaluating adversarial robustness of object trackers based on bounding box versus binary mask predictions, and attack methods at different levels of perturbations. Interestingly, our study found that altering the perturbation level may not significantly affect the overall object tracking results after the attack. Similarly, the sparsity and imperceptibility of the attack perturbations may remain stable against perturbation level shifts. By applying a specific attack on all transformer trackers, we show that new transformer trackers having a stronger cross-attention modeling achieve a greater adversarial robustness on tracking datasets, such as VOT2022ST and GOT10k. Our results also indicate the necessity for new attack methods to effectively tackle the latest types of transformer trackers. The codes necessary to reproduce this study are available at https://github.com/fatemehN/ReproducibilityStudy.
Efficient Data Distribution Estimation for Accelerated Federated Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Federated Learning(FL) is a privacy-preserving machine learning paradigm where a global model is trained in-situ across a large number of distributed edge devices. These systems are often comprised of millions of user devices and only a subset of available devices can be used for training in each epoch. Designing a device selection strategy is challenging, given that devices are highly heterogeneous in both their system resources and training data. This heterogeneity makes device selection very crucial for timely model convergence and sufficient model accuracy. To tackle the FL client heterogeneity problem, various client selection algorithms have been developed, showing promising performance improvement in terms of model coverage and accuracy. In this work, we study the overhead of client selection algorithms in a large scale FL environment. Then we propose an efficient data distribution summary calculation algorithm to reduce the overhead in a real-world large scale FL environment. The evaluation shows that our proposed solution could achieve up to 30x reduction in data summary time, and up to 360x reduction in clustering time.
Recent Advances in Data-Driven Business Process Management
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2024
Year: 2024

The rapid development of cutting-edge technologies, the increasing volume of data and also the availability and processability of new types of data sources has led to a paradigm shift in data-based management and decision-making. Since business processes are at the core of organizational work, these developments heavily impact BPM as a crucial success factor for organizations. In view of this emerging potential, data-driven business process management has become a relevant and vibrant research area. Given the complexity and interdisciplinarity of the research field, this position paper therefore presents research insights regarding data-driven BPM.